Indian theatre personality and ad filmmaker, Alyque Padamsee regrets that the Hindi theatres in the country could not be promoted like the celluloid ventures.
"Today there is no Hindi theatre in the country and it had never been promoted like the Bollywood movies," who had portrayed Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the film Gandhi, said.
The ad guru was in the steel city to take part in a panel discussion on 'Hundred years of Indian Cinema-Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow' organised by the Centre for Excellence, Tata Steel and city-based film society 'Celluloid Chapter' here last night.
"We must have good director and good script that could inspire the masses," he said.
Rueing that Hindi theatre had never been promoted the way it should have, Padamsee said, "The Prithivi Theatre had been associated with many good Hindi plays."
Padamsee, who headed the advertising company Lintas, also praised the Marathi theatre, calling it "very good and world class".
"Marathi plays continue to attract audiences as they have good directors, professionals and even good plays bag prizes even now,"
About other regional theatres, he said "Tamil theatre is also good and once Bengali theatres too had good following but not now."
The theatre veteran had directed and acted in American playwright Arthur Miller's award-winning play 'Death of a Salesman,' 25 years after he first acted in it, in a lead role with Sabira Merchant.
The English theatres still continued to draw huge crowd in the country because of scripts from abroad, he said adding that even "we (Indian) have good English writers today.
Padamshee said he had plans to stage the 'Jesus Christ Superstar', running in parts of the world for last 40 years, in the country in October 2014.
